A Texan conservative Anglican -- yes, a square peg -- ponders both churchly and worldly things and enjoys his new church.

Wednesday, April 01, 2015

The End of Tolerance (and of Freedom and of the Rule of Law)

Readers may have noticed I am not the most
optimistic person about the future of the United States, but even this
pessimist is distressed by the vehement response to Indiana’s modest attempt to defend Freedom of
Religion.(Yes, it is modest.If you’ve been misled or alarmed by the lies and
exaggerations about it, here is a good summary cutting through the . . .
untruths.)

The willingness of corporate America particularly –
even Wal-Mart and Cummins Engine – to attack freedom of religion especially
alarms.Theoretically, a state
can and should resist attacks on Constitutional freedom from the Feds.But states are understandably unwilling
to risk hamstringing their economies to do . . . anything.And if even Wal-Mart considers Freedom
of Religion something to be tossed aside for the mandatory gay agenda, we are
in a bad place indeed.

Wal-mart prefers gay rights to religious
liberty. Is this to the culture war what the Cronkite Moment was to Vietnam?
http://t.co/jzay5iriZv
—
Rod Dreher (@roddreher) April
1, 2015

And whatever happened to tolerance?We are now in an Orwellian place where
tolerance, e. g. giving businesspeople space to conduct their businesses in
line with their beliefs, is bigotry; and bigotry, particularly anti-Christian
and anti-Jewish bigotry, is “tolerance.”

But genuine hate – and let their be no mistake,
#BoycottIndiana has hate for traditional Christians written all over it – can make
one toss aside decent principles as Alan Jacobs, hardly a right-winger, points
out.

When you look at the people who have been
protected by religious liberty laws, the liberal opposition to them is a
straightforward …
— Alan Jacobs (@ayjay) March
30, 2015

But “tolerance” is a word not used as much by the
Left as it once was; it is not as useful now.It is becoming clear “tolerance” was just an attractive
station to get and keep us on the train to totalitarianism.Yes, a society and/or government
willing to force a businessperson or anyone for that matter to participate
against their conscience in a gay wedding or in an elective abortion or else
has a strong totalitarian streak to say the least.

The age of tolerance in America is
vanishing before your eyes. The question is how Christians and other people of
faith and good will are going to respond.

A big question indeed and one I am honestly afraid
to address. And it is not only tolerance that is going.So is the Constitutional Rule of Law,
not to mention Consent of the Governed.

Let’s break this down in stark and
simple terms: Not only were gay activists willing to overturn an act of
Congress (the Defense of Marriage Act) on spurious grounds; they also wish to force their libertine idea of
marriage onto voters in each of the 50 states, voiding dozens of laws on an
issue that has always rested with the states.

Get your heads into that mental place
where you will be able to face the persecution that is coming. You will
be vilified, in especially venomous ways, even within the Church by catholics
seeking to twist the Church into an instrument of social re-engineering.